Monalisa Chaudhuri
Calcutta, March 29: The National Investigation Agency probing the Burdwan blast has come across a piece of land near Santiniketan which it suspects would have been used by the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh to set up a colony for its operators.

Senior officers of the NIA linked the possible plan to set up the colony in Shantipally to "operating a sleeper cell". They said a JMB leader in charge of the module in Birbhum had been instructed by his bosses in the neighbouring country to set up the colony.

"It was a dangerous proposition. They had planned to set up a colony in the heart of Birbhum to provide training and shelter to new recruits. Talha Sheikh, a Bangladeshi leader who was the organisational in-charge of the group in Birbhum, had procured an Indian PAN card and used it to buy the plot in Shantipally," an NIA officer said.

Talha is untraceable.

Officers said the decision to buy the plot was evidence enough that the JMB module in Bengal was planning to base itself in Birbhum.

"The piece of land is concrete proof that the JMB operators had found the location suitable to establish a base there," said an officer associated with the investigation.

Birbhum came under the NIA's scanner after investigators found that a number of JMB operatives had stayed in villages in the district and used them as base to travel to and from Burdwan, where the October 2 blast lifted the veil off terror modules operating in the state.

The NIA had last year found four interconnected houses in nearby Bolpur that were built allegedly by members of the Burdwan terror module. The agency had found from the houses half-a-dozen boxes with circuits that are used to detonate bombs.

NIA teams have visited the area several times as part of the agency's probe into the "accidental" blast.

Sources said living in a colony along with women and children and adopting a lifestyle led by people of the area is among the best possible ways to establish a base without arousing suspicion.

Most of the JMB operatives arrested in connection with the blast had chosen means of living that were least likely to arouse suspicion in the neighbourhood.

Dalim Sheikh, one of the blast suspects and an occupant of the four interconnected houses, used to deal in utensils.

"It's a self-sustained model that supports the cause of terror activities in the garb of a peaceful household," an officer of the central agency explained.

Talha, known to be close to Sajid, the JMB's alleged pointman in Bengal, used to travel between Nadia's Debagram and Birbhum's Kirnahar, sources said.

With an experience in training JMB recruits, especially in handling weapons and improvised explosive devices, Talha was assigned the task of indoctrinating new recruits at the colony that was supposed to have come up at Shantipally.

"The presence of women and children as part of a family almost always yields a favourable disguise for a thriving terror module. Talha Sheikh had earlier trained youths in Burdwan and Birbhum. He was assigned to do the same thing here," an officer said.

Sources said the investigators learned about the piece of land after questioning suspected JMB operator Mithu Sheikh, who was arrested in Birbhum last year.

"Mithu Sheikh and other JMB operators, including Dalim Sheikh and Sheikh Habibur, would have been instrumental in setting up the colony. Mithu broke down after his arrest and spilled the beans," an officer said.Blast sleuths find 'sleeper-cell colony' land

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Real cool, these operators.

Have their own safe and secured colony!

One wonders what is Bengal's IB doing or does this colony have good old Mamata Bannerjee's blessings?

Now we have security issues on the third border. We have to double our effort to weed out the incompetent officials at every level and increase the border patrol manually as well as deploy Drones as USA does on her border with Mexico.